


Startle Reaction

by goldkirk



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 12:16:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldkirk/pseuds/goldkirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was not what he'd signed up for. Nowhere in the job description had it mentioned getting punched in the nose. Armin felt some wetness on his hands, and he wasn't sure what it was. Blood? Tears? Maybe both. (Or, Armin gets roped into filling in for Eren, and Mina punches him in the face.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Startle Reaction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vashiane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vashiane/gifts).



> For vashiane, who's had quite a day. I hope everything worked perfectly. :) And also for Sarah, who also had quite a day in very different ways. I hope this is fluffy enough for you guys.

When Armin found out that Eren was sick, he didn't think anything of it at first. It was October, lots of people were getting colds or dealing with allergies. He felt bad for Eren, but it wasn't like Eren's cold affected him, right?

Armin soon realized how wrong he was.

At the beginning of October, Thomas had told Sasha about some job openings for a seasonal haunted house that high schoolers could apply for. So Sasha told Connie, and Connie told Marco, and Marco told Jean who made the terrible mistake of mentioning it to Eren, and Eren dragged Mikasa and Armin to the job interview and long story short all of them were working at the haunted house within a week. When Eren set his mind to something, things got done. 

Armin wasn't too mad, though; he'd ended up with a spot on the cleanup crew that closed up the haunted house after hours. It was infinitely better than being one of the actors. He thought he'd probably die of a heart attack if he had to be a part of it while it was open. All in all, Armin was relieved he didn't get accepted for one of those positions. Now, he thought, he was safe. Nothing to worry about, since the actor roles were all filled, and he even had a nice income to boot. 

Nothing to worry about, that is, until Eren got sick and  _volunteered Armin to take his place._

* * *

 

_"No."_

"Armin, I'm sorry, but you don't have a choice. The manager already put you down for it. I tried to talk sense into Eren but he insisted it would be good for you," Mikasa said.

"I won't. There's no way. I can call in sick or something."

"No you can't."

"There's no way I'm dressing up as a vampire and scaring people all night—I'll be freaking out myself! And vampires are so tacky now, not actually creepy like they were when they were psychologically terrifying and not some kind of bloodsucking boyfriend cult. If I was playing Dracula, maybe—"

"Great! Then pretend you're Dracula, Armin, because we're supposed to be there in ten minutes!" Mikasa shoved a protesting Armin out the school entrance.

* * *

 

"I will thuck your bwood!" Armin hissed halfheartedly at the middleschoolers who were stumbling by. One of them gave a bit of a jump, but other than that no one payed him any attention and the group turned the corner to encounter the next jump scare. Connie stuck his head around the wall.

"No offense, man, but you really suck at this."

"Thath the mummy," Armin retorted.

"At least the mummy can say 'says.'"

"Pleathe thut up," Armin moaned, tugging at the collar of his cape. "How doeth Eren even thalk in theth???"

"He wore the fangs for two days straight while we were camping with the Eagle scouts to practice," Connie said. "It was awesome!"

Armin moaned. "How much longer?"

"Uh—" Connie disappeared around the corner for a minute. Sasha, mummified, shuffled into view. 

"Just fifteen more minutes, then we're done!" she flashed Armin a grin. "Don't worry, probably no one will even come through after this. Maybe only a couple of stragglers."

"Good."

"Hey, you're doing great! Just a little bit longer! Then you can get out of that coffin and actually stand up. Man, I wish  _I_ was in the coffin, I could scare Connie so badly he—"

"Sasha!" Mikasa's growl came from off to their left. "Get back to your spot!"

Sasha gave Armin a thumbs-up and hopped away. Armin would have laughed at how goofy she looked if he hadn't been afraid of choking on the fake teeth.

Several minutes had passed without anyone walking through, and Armin finally gave up and just sat up in the coffin instead of laying down. The wood hurt and he'd been in it for way too long already. If anyone was coming, he could lay back down. Armin sighed softly as he sat up and closed his eyes. After a minute, he turned his shoulders to shift position—

Someone let out an inhuman squeak and the next thing Armin knew he was grabbing for his nose, which was in major pain.

"Ow," he moaned. This was not what he'd signed up for. Nowhere in the job description had it mentioned getting punched in the nose. Armin felt some wetness on his hands, and he wasn't sure what it was. Blood? Tears? Maybe both.

"Oh," a distinctly feminine voice said from right next to him. "Oh my goodness. I'm so sorry! I am so, so, SO sorry!" Hands fluttered around his shoulders. "Oh my gosh. Are you okay? Did I hurt you? Oh man, I can't believe I punched you! I'm so sorry!" The girl sounded like she was pretty close to tears herself. Through the pain and his watery eyes, Armin squinted, trying to make out his accidental assailant in the darkness.

"Ith's okay," he mumbled. "Noth dead or anything. Justh hurths."

"OH MY GOSH, DID I KNOCK OUT YOUR TEETH?!"

Armin ripped out his fake teeth. "No, no, that was from the fake fangs." He noticed he sounded like he had a cold. "You didn't hit my mouth, just my nose. Seriously, I'm okay. It just hurts. You didn't hit me hard enough to break anything, although you sure pack some power in your punch..."

"I'm so sorry," she moaned. The lights flickered on around them and Mikasa came running in. 

"I heard—Armin, holy cow are you okay? Here, let me see," she pulled Armin's hands away from his face and looked at the damage. Connie walked in and whistled. 

"Wow, nice nosebleed there, man!"

The girl covered her face. Sasha came in with some paper towels. 

"Here," she handed them to Mikasa. "Connie, come on and help me get this mummy suit off already!" They walked off.

"It's actually not that bad," Mikasa said with relief. "Once the bleeding stops you should be okay. It'll just be tender for a while."

"Yeah it already doesn't hurt as much." Armin looked over at the girl who'd punched him, who was now hugging herself and looking completely miserable. The girl was cute, in a bit of a nerdy way. Her pigtails had gotten a bit frizzy, and she was wearing a vintage-looking jumper. Armin climbed out of the coffin, still holding the paper towels up to his nose. "Hey," he said. "Seriously. It's okay. I'm not mad."

"But I punched you in the face! You weren't even trying to scare me!" She laughed nervously. "Um, my name is Mina, by the way."

"Armin," he said. Mikasa left, presumably to go take off her costume.

"Sorry I'm—I'm pretty easily spooked. It was a bad idea to come in here. I'm so sorry I hit you. Is there anything I can do to make up for it?"

"Uh," Armin said. "You could buy me ice cream?"

"Sorry?" Mina blinked. Her confusion was a bit adorable, Armin thought.

"Ice cream," he said again."You know, cold, flavors, icy, creamy...that stuff?"

"Yeah, I know what ice cream is, you fruit loop. I'm confused about why you want it."

"Well," Armin pulled the paper towels away, since the bleeding had slowed down enough, and tossed them in the trash can. "Ice cream is good, and also there's a group of nerves in the top of your mouth that you can numb to help with headaches or nosebleeds and stuff like that, and also I would like to get to know the interesting girl whose startle reaction happens to be punching people in the face."

"I should feel bad but you're making me laugh about this," Mina smiled finally.

"Good. So, ice cream?" He pulled out his keys and ditched the rest of his costume on a bench.

"Um, sure? I should warn you that I'm weird—I like gummy bears in my ice cream. A lot of them."

"Yeah, I guessed that you're kind of crazy. But that's okay because I'm weird too. I prefer the gummy worms, personally."

The entire ride to the local ice cream place was dominated by an intense debate about gummy worms vs. gummy bears (both of got high on the conversation, and mentioned how they craved intellectual banter that none of their friends seemed to enjoy), and in the end the verdict was that sour punch straws won.  Which, as Armin protested, hadn't even been one of the options. Mina told him to shut up and enjoy the sour goodness. 

"But I don't want to shut up! We're supposed to be discussing the latest rocket launch next, remember?" (When Mina's phone lit up in the car with a notification from the NASA twitter feed, Armin had been over the moon to discover she loved outer space too.)

"But right now, we're eating ice cream together."

"But  _space,"_ Armin protested.

Mina's eyes lit up as she leaned over and kissed him on the lips, ice cream and all. "Space later. Ice cream now. In fact, planetarium later. But ice cream. And staring. Now. Savvy?"

Armin shut up and ate his ice cream. 

(Later that night those two ended up getting kicked out of the planetarium for getting too excited over the exhibits, artifacts, and especially the laser projector, and as the security guards put it "becoming an annoyance to the other patrons with their raised voices and constant running around between things in excitement."

Mina fired back that first of all the staff should be glad to have people who were actually interested for once, instead of just bored field trip groups, and second that it was ten at night and there wasn't anyone else there, so the security guards could go drink some tea or something.

That's when they got kicked out for real, and Armin couldn't have been more happy as Mina sat next to him on a bench alternating between rants about the unfairness and excited rambles about space missions and event horizons.)

The joke was on Eren. The experience HAD been good for Armin. Just not like Eren had intended. And his best friends would still be getting a solid whack on the back of the head next time Armin saw him. But for now...for now there were some Star Trek philosophy discussions to be had.


End file.
